Formatting a float with a set number of decimals

Rails
1

Another newbie question:

How do i convert a float to a string, rounded to a certain number of
decimals?

Thanks

2

Is this it?
sprintf("%0.2f",10.12345)

Is there a better way?

chris hulbert wrote:

Another newbie question:

How do i convert a float to a string, rounded to a certain number of
decimals?

Thanks

3

Chris:

I don’t KNOW the answers to your question (which may lead you to
wonder why I wrote). Depending on the situation, I’d suggest you look
up one of these two.

There is a helper called number_with_precision. It works like this,
if x is the number

number_with_precision(x, number of decimal places)

To convert a number to a string, assuming the number was x

x.to_s

Hope that helps. People on this list are always helping me.

bruce

4

chris hulbert wrote:

Another newbie question:

How do i convert a float to a string, rounded to a certain number of
decimals?

Thanks

This works…

“%5.2f” % number

5

On Tuesday 17 Jan 2006 05:38, chris hulbert wrote:

Is this it?
sprintf(“%0.2f”,10.12345)
Is there a better way?

Assuming you’re dealing with currency, in my case it’s GBP (so you can
replace
the £ with $ or Euro whatever you need), but here’s what I have in
my
application_helper.rb

def display_currency(number)
unless number.nil?
“£” + sprintf(“%01.2f”,number)
end
end

Then in my views I can just do:

<%= display_currency @price %>

~Dave

–

Dave S.
Rent-A-Monkey Website Development
Web: http://www.rentamonkey.com/

6

Thanks for all the input, i ended up with this, and indeed it is for
currency:

def n(number,dec_places=0,divide_by=-1)
	# given a number, rounds it, divides it by Y and stringifies it
	# or if it is infinite, returns an 'x'
	if !number.nil? && (!(number.kind_of? Float) || number.finite?)
		v = number
		v /= divide_by if divide_by != -1
		if v >= 0 then
			"%.#{dec_places}f" % v + "&nbsp;"
		else
			"(%.#{dec_places}f)" % (-v)
		end
	else
		'x&nbsp;'
	end
end
7

Chris, I had a similar requirement (be able to round to arbitrary
amount of decimals). What I did was made a very simple plugin with one
class in it:

class Float
alias original_round round
def round(precision = 0)
if precision == 0
original_round
else
sprintf("%.#{precision}f", self).to_f
end
end
end

This overrides the Float class so now you can just do:
23.43.round #=23
23.43.round(1) #= 23.4
etc…

It works like a champ. Dont know if there would be any issues with it
in the long run, but couldn’t think of any.

-Nick

p.s. just thought, I should probably and a check for negative
percision, but why would anyone want to even try that? :slight_smile:

8

Nick S. wrote:

It works like a champ. Dont know if there would be any issues with it
in the long run, but couldn’t think of any.

-Nick

p.s. just thought, I should probably and a check for negative
percision, but why would anyone want to even try that? :slight_smile:

You should check for a decimal precision too…

_Kevin

9

Hrmmm, that would be good too. Of course right now I’m the only
developer in my company, and I know better. :slight_smile:
famous last words

10

chris hulbert wrote:

Thanks for all the input, i ended up with this, and indeed it is for
currency:

def n(number,dec_places=0,divide_by=-1)
# given a number, rounds it, divides it by Y and stringifies it
# or if it is infinite, returns an ‘x’
if !number.nil? && (!(number.kind_of? Float) || number.finite?)
v = number
v /= divide_by if divide_by != -1
if v >= 0 then
“%.#{dec_places}f” % v + " "
else
“(%.#{dec_places}f)” % (-v)
end
else
'x ’
end
end

Lots of problems here…

  1. will break if you divide by zero
  2. Should check to see if number is a subclass of Integer instead of not
    a Float
  3. if number is an Integer, when you divide by divide_by, you will
    truncate the the value instead of rounding.

_Kevin